From the I can't believe I'm not making this up department comes the headline Dancing Robots Help Preserve Japanese Culture. Go, go, Mr. Roboto. I wish I was a dancer so I could be really offended or something but this just sounds ridiculous. To quote one of the linked articles:
The number of humans that know and practice Japanese traditional dancing is declining rapidly and many Japanese have seen it only at local festivals. Using Kawada's HRP-2 Promet humanoid, a $484,000 robot, Ikeuchi has painstakingly found ways to reproduce the physical moves of Japanese dance in a robot.How many people could you train to dance if you offered to pay them a portion of $484,000? Or even just pay existing dancers to learn the particular dancing in question? And I have an image in my head of the animatronics parodied in the Simpsons - you know; they moved awkwardly and caught fire. I for one, do not welcome my Dancing Japanese Overlords.